German Secret Police Keep Spying On The Wrong People

Last fall, we learned that German authorities
had failed to uncover a plot by a neo-Nazi group to murder
nine immigrants despite having monitored the group since the late
'90s.

As we now
learn from Der Spiegel, they were apparently distracted by
the activities of fairly run-of-the-mill leftists.

The paper reveals that Germany's Federal Office for the
Protection of the Constitution (BfV) has been spying on 27
members of "The Left" party now in parliament — a third of the
party's representation:

"According to a Jan. 4, 2012 document from the Interior
Ministry, the BfV employs seven workers for the "handling of the
Left Party" with personnel costs of some €390,000 ($504,000) per
year. By way of comparison, more than 10 domestic intelligence
agents are conducting surveillance on members of the neo-Nazi
National Democratic Party (NPD), at a cost of some €590,000 each
year.

"They've been looking in the wrong direction, and maybe for
political reasons. It raises a very big question mark about the
work they do. If they are really concentrating on preventing a
danger to democracy in Germany, they are failing on a grand
scale."